Sony Music has begun to distribute the $750 million in profit it collected from the April sale of 50% of its Spotify shares to the artists and distributed labels within the Sony system, Variety has confirmed. As previously reported, Sony, which held 5.7% of Spotify’s stock when the streaming service went public, will not count the funds against the artists’ and label’s unrecouped earnings.

Rather, the “Spotify windfall,” as SME insiders are calling the disbursement, will be apportioned according to individual artist and label contract terms and based on earnings over the last 10 years — or since Sony’s initial investment in the Swedish streaming upstart — divisible against Sony’s own revenues from the Spotify stock gain for that time period.

What does this mean to the thousands of artists, representatives and some two million titles involved? The checks are in the mail, and set to arrive by the end of August. Sony had previously stated its commitment to sharing the sum with artists and distributed labels. Music Business Worldwide caught wind of the plan back in June.

Sony’s payout contrasts with that of competitor Warner Music Group, which took its $126 million in profit and proportionally credited it to artist accounts, but against unrecouped balances and owed expenses (WMG had a 1.9% stake in Spotify and sold all of its equity earlier this month for just over $500 million). That means an artist that is operating in the red and technically still owes the company money will see that balance shrink, but may not pocket any funds: The proceeds would end up back with Warner as part of the recoupment.

The majority of major label artists, particularly developing ones, are in an unrecouped position. But those artists signed to Columbia, RCA, Epic and Legacy, the big four of Sony’s recorded music subsidiaries, will also get a check in the coming days, so long as their information is current in the Sony system. The company utilized its breakage allocation system to apportion the payments.

The formula Sony used is fairly straightforward: the company looked at the 10-year period during which it owned equity in Spotify, then looked at its revenue from Spotify and overall revenue for the time and divided it up by revenue generated by the artist or label.

So if an artist had $5 million in sales over that period, and Sony registered $30 billion in revenue, that contribution (.016%) would be allocated to its portion of the Spotify payout and paid to the artist according to the act’s contract terms for digital royalties. Not surprisingly, the biggest checks seem to align with the most successful artists on the roster — here’s looking at you, Adele — though steady catalog sellers also fare well. The company opted for what was more fair in terms of not weighting those artists who have been stronger in streaming.

“To their credit, it seems like they didn’t even think twice about recognizing that that there is value in the relationship between Sony and the creators of the music,” says Thirty Tigers’ co-founder David Macias. His RED-distributed label has been in business with Sony for 16 years and is home to such artists as Jason Isbell, Lucinda Williams and Lupe Fiasco. “There’s a reason I haven’t gone anywhere else,” he adds. “There’s a compensatory relationship there. I’ve always felt like they treated us incredibly fairly and it didn’t surprise me that they chose to take what I felt was a moral stance on this. I know the artists we work with appreciate it a lot. And I appreciate it immensely and certainly in turn we’re sharing those proceeds with our artists.”

In Thirty Tigers’ instance, the artists own their own work and it will be left up to the label to distribute the funds. The labels are under no obligation to turn over all of the proceeds, though in its letter to participants, Sony Music encouraged distributed labels to pay the windfall forward. For a label like Thirty Tigers, it does leave open the question of what the obligation is to pay acts that are no longer on the label but generated money during the 10-year period. Macias says that, in his case, they will be honoring those relationships too. “We are making the choice to pay our artist that helped contribute to that,” he says, adding that Sony’s gesture will right what many artists have been complaining about since the arrival of streaming. “A lot of artists out there were super angry, or you could say upset in advance, that this incredible amount of wealth was being conferred and not necessarily to them.

Friday, August 17, 2018

In its earnings call on Monday morning, Warner Music Group announced that it has sold around 75% of its Spotify equity for approximately $400 million. “We will be sharing equity proceeds with distributed labels,” Cooper said, if that stipulation is included in their agreements with the company. Separately, but as part of the same earnings report in which the sale of its Spotify earnings were announced, Warner said $300 million will go to shareholders.

Earlier this year Sony Music announced that it has sold 17.2% of its shares in Spotify, yielding a gain for the label of $260 million or more, according to a notice Sony shared with investors.

WMG CEO Stephen Cooper was quick to note that the company’s decision does not reflect a lack of confidence in Spotify’s future. “Just so there won’t be any misinterpretation about the rationale for our decision to sell, let me be clear: We’re a music company, and not, by our nature, long-term holders of publicly traded equity,” he said. “This sale has nothing to do with our view of Spotify’s future. We’re hugely optimistic about the growth of subscription streaming, we know it has only just begun to fulfill its potential for global scale. We fully expect Spotify to continue to play a major role in that growth.”

Asked about the sale on the call, Cooper added, “I think at the moment our valuation reflects what we believe is fair. The speculation about [whether] Universal Music Group [will sell any of its equity] remains speculation at the moment, and with respect to public versus private, to the best of my knowledge [Warner parent company] Access prefers private, so I think that while we’re seeing a lot of interesting movement in the world of music. The only one that’s really materialized is Spotify, and the valuation that they received was expected, and good for them.”

Warner’s percentage of ownership was not disclosed, although it is less than 5%, the minimum that would make the company obligated to disclose changes in its holdings under SEC rules. At the time of Spotify’s initial public offering, Sony Music Entertainment owned 5.7% of Spotify’s outstanding shares, or 10.16 million shares. With the sale, Sony Music retains 8.4 million Spotify shares, or 4.7% of the internet company’s total ordinary shares.

SME did not disclose the value of the Spotify shares it sold Tuesday. Spotify’s stock opened at $165.90 per share at 12:43 p.m. ET before closing at $149.01. Given that it sold about 1.74 million shares, at the closing price that would have been worth around $260 million. In the announcement, Warner said that these results contributed to its cash balance of $612 million at the end of the quarter.

Warner re-emphasized that it was the first major music company to announce that we would share proceeds with our artists from the sale of equity in digital services. “As we said, we’ll share these proceeds on the same basis as we share revenue from actual streams and so-called digital breakage. In addition, we will be sharing equity proceeds with distributed labels, if included in their agreements with us.”

Thursday, August 2, 2018

These Covers remind me of photo doctor graphix im glad everone is stepping up their artwork ,it got ELG backed fired up about the music scene once again :Had to redoctrine my brain for the new tier of artist and thier Fresh Sonar Nexus Sound Totally different artists But you can say they from a parallel universe Saucy Fabrics Designers top product is what they draped in , Tripple Redd is seen Rocking 2 BussDown Rolex Skydweller on each wrist Taking pulls from black n mild exhaling the smoke blowing towards his signiture 8ball spike chain looks like a real chain until the sun light hits the vvs.

ELGMUZIKGREWP EST2013

yes hello this is not ablog for who are you's blank album cds sub par lyrics etc.. this is what i like to call a music arena tournament,it will include music from some of well known artist mainstream -independant & underground north south east west